Offerings from the Bronze Age
Jessica Rawson introduces highlights from Sir Peter Moores’ remarkable collection of ancient Chinese bronzes at Compton Verney, and explains how our knowledge of these ritual vessels is being transformed by archaeological discoveries.
Jessica Rawson, Wednesday, 23rd April 2008
The fundamental ornament of all early Shang ritual vessels had been based upon the taotie; many complex variations were evolved over centuries, with some minor creatures, birds, dragons and cicadas, for example, being used in subordinate borders. But in the initial bronze-casting phases (c. 1400-1300 BC), recognisable creatures did not occupy the central decorative regions on the main parts of the bodies of the different vessel types. In this context, the owl is remarkable. Bronzes incorporating the owl are all intricately presented. Small scales, indicating feathers, equal the detail of the surrounding motifs and their fine rectangular spiral backgrounds. But the prominent eyes and beak draw attention away from the more conventional surfaces and ensure that we focus on them first.
A different form of attention is achieved by vessels whose form is created by two owls back to back, as on another wine vessel, a you, at Compton Verney (Fig. 1).2 Without the intense, almost obsessive, detail with which the owl was developed on the fang jia in Figure 2, the double owl you has a smooth, almost sculptural presence. Its feet are relatively tall and give the impression that it is about to move. There are only a few other Shang-period vessel types on which the sculptural elements derive from creatures. Among these is a vessel also for wine, known as a gong (Fig. 3). The example at Compton Verney has a fierce teethed head and jaw, perhaps derived from designs employed on chariot fittings, where fierce-headed creatures were sometimes deployed. In other ways, the body of the creature is subdued and references to known creatures avoided. The taotie on the body returns the vessels to what we recognise as the full Shang tradition. Shang period bronzes thus offer a dialogue between attention to animal motifs as devices to create fascinating surfaces within a strong bronze-casting ornamental tradition and the presentation of creatures with a more realistic character that draw attention by their references to something we recognise from the everyday world.
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